Friday, November 7, 2025
Angelica Garcia, an East Rockaway Junior-Senior High School student, isn’t sure which photo won her the Long Island Scholar-Artist award, presented by the Long Island Arts Alliance and Newsday.
Maybe it was the orchid against a pitch-black background. Maybe it was one of her landscapes, which the majority of her photos are, because nature is “everywhere and anywhere,” she said.
But Garcia remembers how it all began: with her mother.
“Things that people can usually pass by every day, she used to take pictures of, so it made me aware of it,” Garcia said. “So, I was like, ‘Oh, this would be a nice picture. Those would be nice pictures.’ I think that's what got me into it.”
This past summer, her quiet observation of the world around her earned her one of Long Island’s most prestigious student art honors. Garcia was recognized in the Media Arts category for her photography— one of only 40 students selected across Nassau and Suffolk counties.
“I’m just really grateful,” Garcia said. “Not many people get it, and it was a shock to me. Sometimes I just need to take myself out of my own things, because I always feel a doubt that my photos are not good or whatever.”
Garcia, a 16-year-old senior, advanced ahead in school after enrolling early due to her private school’s academic calendar, skipping a grade and continuing on an accelerated path.
Garcia balances artistic creativity with academic drive. She’s a decorated legal studies student, a scholarship recipient from St. Bonaventure University and a dedicated volunteer at Camp Anchor, where she’s worked for three years supporting children and adults with special needs — especially in the arts and crafts program. Still, photography is the passion that helps her pause, observe and process the world.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she says. “The most unexpected things usually are the best pictures.”
To qualify for the Long Island Scholar-Artist award, Garcia had to meet high academic standards and compile a portfolio that demonstrated thematic cohesion. The award required a common thread for all photos submitted, so Garcia and her art teacher, Kristie Galante, recruited students and staff to help analyze her portfolio.
“We laid her photos all out on a table,” Galante said.
Galante, who nominated Garcia for the award, recalls the moment when everything clicked. After surveying peers, they chose minimalism as the theme — a decision based not on Garcia’s most complicated or dramatic images, but on those with striking simplicity.
“The photos were stronger,” Galante said.
Despite her success, Garcia said the encouragement was unexpected.
“I didn’t think my photos were something special or interesting,” Garcia said. “But when my teacher looked at them, she was like, ‘These are really good. You're doing really good.’”
That validation stayed with her.
Still, Garcia sees photography more as a lifelong hobby than a career. Instead, her sights are set on the medical field, specifically becoming a nurse anesthesiologist.
It’s a profession that caught her attention thanks to a movie that explored anesthesia awareness.
“It was so interesting to me how your body's asleep, but there's a possibility that you can know what's happening,” she said. “It's just so fascinating to me.”
She plans to attend a two-year program to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and then transfer to a specialized school.
Even as she moves toward medicine, Garcia will carry with her the eye of a photographer — shaped by her mother, sharpened by her classes, and grounded in a perspective that sees beauty in the everyday.
“Photography taught me to see the hidden beauty in things that often go overlooked,” she said, “That has made me appreciate my surroundings more.”
